The Adventure Game Puzzle That Was So Bad It Has Its Own Wikipedia Page
Classic point-and-click adventure games are notorious for making players perform absurd mental gymnastics to solve their puzzles. In these games, simple problems rarely have simple solutions. A particularly infamous example can be found in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, in which would-be pirate Guybrush Threepwood has to use a water pump to drain a waterfall that's blocking his way. The handle is missing, but it isn't just lying around somewhere waiting to be picked up. This is an old school LucasArts adventure game after all. The solution is much, much sillier.
Step one: head to nearby Scabb Island. Here you'll find the Bloody Lip Bar & Grill, where a monkey named Jojo is playing the piano. Above the piano is a metronome, on which you stick a banana you just happen to have stuffed in your pirate pants. Jojo is frozen by the delicious-looking fruit swinging hypnotically back and forth in front of him, letting you pick him up and shove him in your impossibly deep pockets. Step two: head back to the waterfall on Phatt Island and use Jojo's stiffened tail—which is shaped like a wrench, kinda—on the pump. Waterfall drained, puzzle solved.
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Turns out all you had to do was find a monkey wrench. A lot of people, quite reasonably, did not find this amusing. LucasArts received a flood of letters from frustrated and perplexed players—and I'm sure the company made a tidy profit from desperate calls to its premium hintline too. This is a prime example of '90s adventure game puzzle design. It's ridiculous, sure. A pun that spun wildly out of control. But when you take a step back and think about the solution, it actually makes a twisted kind of sense—certainly
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